Thanks all for the help on educating myself previously.Now, I have some useful information for digestion. If some would be so kind as to help me out. If there is a better list for this question I would appreciate knowing that as well. I hope to install debian, but I need to hardware to cooperate first.
I have a PC164 with AlphaBIOS. I had a copy of WIN NT4 on it. It worked fine except for a memory timing issue that was fixed in service pack 3. It hasn't been booting. No video, no serial console, usually no beeps(I got it once and it's never been duplicated -- it was 5 or 6 beeps). So I dropped down to the SROM level in order to find out what the board is doing. The debug port display the following sequence:
21164A.01.02.03.04.05.06.07.08.0b.3f.05.3f.05.3f.05.3f.05.3f.05.3f.05.3f.05 ...
From the manual:
00 Firmware initialization is complete 01 CPU speed detected 02 CPU speed converted 03 Configuration jumpers read 04 Bcache configuration value computed 05 Bcache control value computed 06 Bcache turned off 07 Memory timing registers written 08 Memory control register written 09 Memory bank 0 register written 0B DRAMs awakened 0C Memory sized and memory bank 0 written 0F Bcache turned on 13 All of memory rewritten (good data parity written) 14 Memory errors cleared; start reading system ROM 3F Fatal error. Second code identifies source of error: 05 = No memory found 06 = Checksum error detected when image was read back from memory 07 = Could not determine the SIMM typeIt appears this memory initialization is having a problem. I can also duplicate the
problem by removing all the memory.I also have not yet, checked anything like in power plane to make sure power if correctly being supplied.
If any of you have an idea of what going on or would like help, I would appreciate it. One person has suggested that I might need to upload a new SROM image via the SROM Port/Debug Monitor. If this is the case does anyone know where a copy of the debug monitor and/or the srom images can be found(at least for a pc164)? I assumethat a standard MMJ cable will work fine for uploading (hardware flow control?). Is this right? I had to make a custom cable and a don't have a proper "SROM cable".
I gets the postcodes, but I have not tried anything else. Philip Thiem -- Icequake.net Administrator Isn't it obvious lumberjacks love traffic lights? GPG Pub Key Archived at wwwkeys.us.pgp.net
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